Parties and party system alike are facing many deep changes in different countries, both in Europe and in the rest of the world. The stability of the party systems, both in their bipolar or multipolar assets, has been challenged since the Seventies at the least.
Moreover, in the last decade this process of increasing fragmentation has been accentuated by the rising of new populist and radical, anti-system political parties. Therefore, the so called established democracies are facing harsh time in terms of political stability, institutional performances, and citizens/voters mistrust.
The economic and financial crisis has had not only very important economic consequences but also constitutional and political effects.
The research project aims to provide a comparative study of five main European countries in which those changes have been very important. The proponents intend to shed light on the main factors affecting the main political changes, as well as the great stability in constitutional terms. In fact, together with a party system trouble, the constitutions have been facing a great deal of stability. Therefore, it is important whether there is a relation between the two phenomena and if any constitutional reform could reverse the political systems' changes.
The research focuses on the constitutional jurisprudences and it tests its influence on the parties and the other political institutions. In fact, something changed since the late XX century and the new Court's activism on the electoral system can be defined either as a physiological or pathological.
The comparative research project on the European doctrine and jurisprudence as well as on the party and parties systems dynamics represents an attempt to outline the main trend in a bunch of countries, among the most representative Western democracies. The presence of scholars and Ph.D students alike is an important element and represents a key tool in leading the research activities.
The research project presents three main innovative points able to improve our knowledge in the field. First, the proposal is promising in theoretical field. The research question keeps together the influence of the constitutional revisions on the party systems, as this approach has not been analysed in wide multinational perspective. The two factors have so far been considered as almost independent and other variables have been included to explain their variation. Vice versa, the present research proposal proposes to consider the co-variation of both of them, at the least. Second, the project represents an innovative step in the analysis of the topic especially from the methodological point of view. As stated, it includes a both qualitative and quantitative approach and related sources and analytical tools. The research in fact intend to follow a double fold approach: a) collecting data on the number of occurrences in terms of constitutional revisions, as well as quantitative data on the main characteristics of the party systems. Moreover, b) the latter action will be coupled with the qualitative analysis. In this line of thinking, it is crucial to stress the fact that the project is innovative also in the fact that it represents a multi-disciplinary team. There is in fact the presence of comparative law scholars and political scientists alike, which is an innovating and promising way to make research in the field, especially as it includes a comparative approach (five cases). Finally, the third innovative and ground-breaking respect of the research comes from the expected results. In fact, in the light of the two previous innovative points, the project represents a promising theoretical and methodological framework able to generate new data and knowledge in the field.